Space Insiders

Summary
In this conversation, Carsten Drachmann, CEO of GOM Space, shares insights on leadership, the importance of people in business, and the evolving landscape of the space industry. He discusses the strategic shifts within GOM Space, focusing on customer-centric solutions and the growing market for small satellites. Carsten emphasizes the need for agility in smaller companies and the importance of building trust with customers. He also reflects on the challenges and opportunities in the global market, particularly in the U.S. and emerging regions.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to GOM Space and Carsten Drachmann
11:00 Leadership and Turnaround Strategies
14:21 Building Trust and Company Culture
17:05 Market Focus and Strategic Changes
19:57 Navigating Global Markets and Competition
22:57 Opportunities in Southeast Asia and the US
26:03 Customer-Centric Solutions in Space Technology
31:03 Customer-Centric Strategies in Business
33:48 Evolving Business Models in the Space Industry
40:11 Future Growth and Strategic Vision for GOM Space
43:39 Cultural Insights and Personal Reflections in the Space Sector

GOMSpace
LinkedIn (Carsten Drachmann)
GOMSpace
GomSpace Group (GOMX), NASDAQ

Space Insiders Team
Email: info@spaceinsiders.show
LinkedIn (Show)
LinkedIn (Tony)
LinkedIn (Rob)

Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or employer.


Creators and Guests

Host
Rob Ruyak
Co-founder and Host of the Space Insiders Show
Host
Tony Sewell
Cloud & Space Tech Exec | Channels, Products, & GTM | Founder and Podcast Host

What is Space Insiders?

Space Insiders is your bi-weekly deep dive into the intersection of space, cloud technologies, and entrepreneurship. Hosted by Tony Sewell and Rob Ruyak, both seasoned space-tech executives, this podcast features candid conversations with founders, investors, and entrepreneurs shaping the future beyond Earth. Whether you're launching a startup, investing in innovation, or just space-curious, Space Insiders gives you the behind-the-scenes insights you won’t hear anywhere else.

New episodes drop every two weeks. Subscribe now and join the orbit!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or employer.

Tony Sewell:

Welcome to Space Insiders. My name is Tony Sull, and as usual here with my great mate, Rob Reyak. How are you going, Rob?

Rob Ruyak:

Good, Tony. Welcome back to The US. Oh. Hope you had a good trip.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. It was really good. The pressure's off a little bit. We we we found a house to live in and got the kids enrolled in school. So it was mission accomplished last week.

Tony Sewell:

So we're only about four weeks away from the big move to Australia. Yeah, the pressure exciting. The pressure is starting to build a little bit, but it's pretty exciting. Exciting.

Rob Ruyak:

That's great. Yeah. I mean, you've gotten a lot done in a very short period of time.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. It's a bit of a sprint towards the end, but, no, it's gonna it's gonna be fun. And I can't believe it's Thanksgiving this week. Crazy.

Rob Ruyak:

I know. I can't either. I can't wait to sign off today.

Tony Sewell:

Are you have you got any plans this week, or are you just in time?

Rob Ruyak:

We got we got family, you know, local and some from out of town and, you know, lots of kids, which is always really good. And so, yeah, really looking forward to it. Just just a little bit of downtime, you know, and just focus on the present, focus on family and friends.

Tony Sewell:

So it's it's so nice and good.

Rob Ruyak:

Yep. Stuff that really matters.

Tony Sewell:

Yep. Yep.

Rob Ruyak:

When you're when you're 97 years old or 100 years old and you're looking back and you're really gonna regret those emails you didn't send out? Or are you gonna actually regret not resolving a fight with the family? I think it's probably the latter. Yeah. Even if that's even attainable.

Rob Ruyak:

Sometimes it's not.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. Definitely. Well, look. We've got a really good guest. I say this every week, but I'm I'm excited about our guest today.

Tony Sewell:

Carsten Drachmann is CEO of GomSpace, a Danish space manufacturer, SmallSats. Carsten and I go back quite a few years. He gave me my first sales management job when we worked together at Datapath, was a great experience. He's been a great mentor and friend over the years. So it was really cool to talk to him for the show today.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. I'd never met him before. I was very impressed with him. I thought it was interesting when we talked a little bit about how do you take company and try to turn it around, which was a very unique And discussion his answer wasn't, you know, well, you look at the business case and you come up with a new plan and you do a market analysis and you do all this business school stuff, his answer was the people, which I loved, right? I mean, is so true.

Rob Ruyak:

It's, I think, oftentimes overlooked. And I think you're think you're really true to yourself as successful leader at the end of the day, if you really think about it, it is the people. It's not a cliche. It's, are people in the right roles? Are they excited to do their job?

Rob Ruyak:

Do you have the right people in the right roles? What gets the whole organization moving on a day to day basis when things are really, really hard and when the company is really being challenged, but also are there for the successes, too. And that was a lot of what his focus was in answering that question, which I thought was really great actually.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. Every one of these discussions we have, it comes back to the people and the culture and I think a lot of sort of management theory and the way that some companies sort of structure their thinking around it, I think they often pay I think it is a lip service sort of paid to it a lot of the time, but the reality is we're managing people and people work with people and being really deliberate around you help develop the culture in the company and how you help people do their jobs and be successful because we're all living our lives and it all comes back to that in the end. It's been one of the most interesting things, I think, through this journey that we've had with this podcast. It's absolutely been a common theme.

Rob Ruyak:

Yep. I agree.

Tony Sewell:

Cool. So before we get to the chat with Carsten, any news items caught your eye this week?

Rob Ruyak:

I think just a couple of things that are, I think, pretty interesting. I mean, the one thing is that the buzz around the Blue Origin landing still continues. People just can't believe it. I think they're just so excited about that engineering feat, but also what it does to the market. It's hard to comb through all of the great blue origin announcements and discussions around it to get to other news.

Rob Ruyak:

But there's a couple of things. I mean, one is, I think, the Starliner challenges that Boeing has had with that spacecraft. And we all know about the unfortunate situation with the astronauts that had to stay up on the ISS for extended periods of time, even though I think if you'd I've read a few things that if you talk to them directly and if you had a chance to talk to them, they wouldn't actually have complained that much about being on the ISS for that long. It just tells you how amazing these people are and how different they are. But I think the future of the Starliner, at least in the next couple of years, is seems to be a little bit clearer.

Rob Ruyak:

I think what they wanna do is NASA wants to focus on, you know, the next missions to be mostly cargo. And they're saying, you know, there's probably going to be a launch not necessarily before April year, but maybe sometimes or maybe shortly thereafter. And I think as part of that, they reduced a bit of the commitment for NASA by about $700,000,000 for, you know, by kind of pivoting there. And it was interesting to note that, you know, Boeing has had about $2,000,000,000 in losses from Starliner since 2016. It just tells you how I think for me, it tells you like just how incredibly difficult it is to do this stuff.

Rob Ruyak:

Not that it's a surprise, but also how impressive it has been that other companies like SpaceX have been able to do that. It's just the complexity of it and the cost and the engineering is just tremendous.

Tony Sewell:

Wonder does make about how successful these kind of legacy integrators or aerospace companies are going to be future in space. I mean, we see stories about Airbus potentially spinning off their space business and others. Clearly Boeing's having some serious issues here, and then you see the rise of companies like Rocket Lab and this great discussion we have with with Gomespace and others. Yeah. There's definitely a kind of feel like there's a changing of the guard.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. I mean, there's there is a changing of the guard. I think the market, because it's a newly revisited commercial competitive market now, it's moves faster than it traditionally has ever moved. You have a significant number of the baby boomer generation that, you know, traditionally stayed at a lot of these companies for decades and decades are retiring. And you have a new workforce that's a little different than that.

Rob Ruyak:

You know, they like people like to move around more. They like to get different experiences. There's more options. So, I think, you know, I have an incredible respect for all the legacy defense industrial base. I mean, these companies, what they do and have done for decades and decades is just tremendous.

Rob Ruyak:

And I love working with them. But yeah, they're challenged, I think, with a lot of just the social dynamics, generational change. I think The US is definitely trying to be more and more competitive with STEM education and pumping out more engineers from universities. And they have a lot more choices now across the board. I think also, I think money is spent differently.

Rob Ruyak:

We see that government is interested in buying more products than just platforms now. So, what does that mean? All these things are very custom built and that's how they operate and that's what the cultures work. I'd So, say it's so exciting to just see the change. But a lot of these companies, I think, and it's easy to say this because they're so large and they have legacy, but I think some of the cultural aspects are going to have to change a bit.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I think that's probably a good entree into our discussion with Carsten. He's gonna talk a bit about how GomSpace is doing it differently and some of the opportunities they've seen there. So I reckon we should get on with the interview.

Tony Sewell:

What do you reckon? Let's do it. Alright. See you in a minute. Alright.

Tony Sewell:

Welcome back. And today, really pleased to have with us the CEO of GomSpace, Carsten Drachman. Carsten, great to see you again.

Carsten Drachmann:

Great to see you guys.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. Pleasure to meet you.

Tony Sewell:

So Rob, Carsten and I go a fair way back. My first sales leadership role was actually working for Carsten back in the days of DataPath which were some interesting times and at Carsten, I'm really excited to have this discussion, been following GoneSpace really closely. You guys have really been doing some interesting stuff lately, really visible in social media now, so like tell us a little bit about GomSpace for our viewers.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Lots is happening right now. So GomSpace, we're based out of Denmark, founded, started here in Denmark in 2007. So I like to call it one of the oldest companies in new space, which is actually true.

Carsten Drachmann:

Our founders were launching the first, this tiny milk carton satellites before NASA and ESA started thinking about using small satellites. So our founders are really pioneers here. So at CosmosSpace today, we do what's called small satellites, sort of from the, you know, shoebox kind of size, 46 if you have big feet, and then up to a dishwasher kind of size, just to give an idea. So this is what we do. We're very much enabling other companies to launch satellites into space and they add their payloads, it's observation, a camera, a signal intelligence, whatever you want to do, but we are very much enabling our customers to go into space.

Carsten Drachmann:

Long heritage, we also selling, one thing is selling the satellites, we also sell all the bits and pieces inside the satellite. So product sales, why? No company, unless they're in their right mind, would start that from the beginning, but we actually have it because when our founders started, there was no market, there was no, couldn't buy anything anyway, had to develop everything. So they've developed everything that you need inside a satellite and that's one of our strengths as well. We have end to end, pretty much in house, all you need for a satellite.

Carsten Drachmann:

The latest that we'll maybe talk about later is we have an IKEA kit, you can just, we will send it to you, but as have the instructions, you go off yourself. We don't need to build it if you can do it yourself.

Rob Ruyak:

Hopefully, the instructions are a little bit easier than IKEA, though.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yep, yep. We'll make sure there are no screws missing because Sorry, we are listed on NASDAQ in Stockholm, have been for the last eight years or so, so we are publicly listed, which means there's a lot. There's a lot of information about us out there.

Tony Sewell:

That's awesome. So, Carsten, when Rob and I were talking about a guest that we wanted to have on and we've had some really fascinating discussions with CEOs and senior execs of a number of space startups and one of the things I was really keen to bring you on to talk about is particularly your history as a leader of businesses. You've kind of created a bit of a niche for yourself or sort of become known as a turnaround guy. Tell us a little bit about that and what draws you to that sort of challenge.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah. What draws anybody to die cutter challenge is a good question. I think the first time was, so not gonna mention names here or companies, but the first time was I didn't know that it was a turnaround situation. I thought it was a growth situation, I relocated with my wife and let's say a couple of weeks in, I realized I couldn't make payroll and called the owners and say, But I thought you said you have enough cash? Oh yeah, maybe we don't.

Carsten Drachmann:

So I sort of was in the middle of it and I had to make a decision at the time. We were actually, we had relocated, my wife and I, to another country, another city, and thought we could live here for some years. So we had to make a decision saying either we go home and say, thank you very much, nice try, but not for me. Or we say, okay, let's give it a shot. And then go all in and we decided to stay.

Carsten Drachmann:

And it's been a, it's a great experience, great journey I had at the time, which developed some of the basic skills about how you do turnarounds, what it's really about. And there many different ways why did it. It's a positive turnaround. How do you take a company, a good company to be better? In my case, usually it's a company that's suffering a bit, and how do make you it perform.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. Do you want

Carsten Drachmann:

Go ahead.

Rob Ruyak:

I was gonna say, so do you have like an approach to I mean, where do you even start with something like that?

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah. Exactly. Where do you start? Two things. First of all, understand the financials and understand the cash is usually where I start.

Carsten Drachmann:

The other thing, my punchline, it's all about people. It's all about people in the end because if you go into companies I go into have existed for many, many years, you usually find out, is it a lack of technology? Nah, no, not really. Is it a lack of competence? Nah, not really.

Carsten Drachmann:

There, everybody there. And slowly you find out it's really about people, it's about how you work together, and then it's a lot about clarity and communication. So what are we trying to achieve together? If it's not clear, you can have as many, you know, super experts as you like, they're probably not gonna work in the same direction, you're gonna be in trouble. So clarity and communication is there, and then the last bit, that's what add, is customers.

Carsten Drachmann:

So you need to be customer focused, which can often be an issue. But I think in my first case, wasn't so much a customer focus. It was simply a lack of clarity of where are we. No idea where we are in our cash, we don't know actually what we're doing, there's no clarity on where we're heading. And then sometimes you need to do some tough decisions on cutting back on staff and people, but it's usually not where I start.

Carsten Drachmann:

I start from understanding what is a cash situation and why are people not working together.

Tony Sewell:

So it's interesting you talk about culture because like every discussion we've had with execs through these interviews has come back to building culture and leadership and being absolutely critical to the success of a company, and Rob and I are completely bored into that. So sort of thinking about that, when you come into this sort of situation, who are the most important people for you as your kind of, all right, you've got to really quickly, like you've got to manage the financial side, but you've also got to quickly earn trust with the team because it's a tenuous time for them as well and people have families they rely on the income and whatnot. Like who are the most important roles that you're working with when you first come into this and those key relationships?

Carsten Drachmann:

First of all, when I go into this, I go in with the assumption everybody's fine, everybody knows what they need to do, they have the knowledge and skills. The issue has been not setting those skills free and enabling people to be successful, that's the starting point. So typically it will be a leadership team and there's usually a leadership group when you come in, you sit down and you get to know those people quickly. And then you start talking and listening, trying to understand what's on their mind. And you will very often find out there's a lot of things that they never said in the past because it wasn't considered, you know, okay to say it or people didn't want to find, point out the flaws.

Carsten Drachmann:

So basically going in very quickly and opening up the floor for, Hey, let's talk. What do you want to do? Do you want to sit here and just watch the whole ship sink? Or are we going to try and figure out where to go? Do you want to be on the journey or not on the journey?

Carsten Drachmann:

So it's going be quite a direct confrontational in the beginning. My experience, nine out of 10 people, they jump right on it because they all wanna be successful. Many of them have been part of the companies I've turned around, have been there for a long time, and they're actually sad about that it's not really succeeding. So quite quickly you build, I build a trust with the leaders around me that has been appointed. Sometimes you need to make some changes, that's fine, it's okay, but if you can get them on board first, then the rest of the organization, there's a high chance that they will follow, number one.

Carsten Drachmann:

Number two is, sneaky answer is everybody because you have to listen to everybody. Have to understand, you know, what's going on in your organization. So it's not just about isolating yourself in a room with initial leaders, if you can call them that, but I go out and talk to people. Tell me. Tell me what's going on.

Carsten Drachmann:

What do you see? What's on your mind? And then based on that, try to create a plan.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. We interviewed an individual, Kevin Stein, not too long ago, and he's had a lot of roles as a CEO, and he talked a lot about it was Our conversation ended up being a lot like leadership, kind of like what we're talking about now with you. Yeah. There is a lot of similarities. I think one of the things that he called out was that leadership's not really about serving yourself or the company per se, but it's actually serving the people that work for you.

Rob Ruyak:

And like you just said, making sure people are in the roles that they should be in and then are they actually able to fulfill the roles that they're in? So, we've heard that a lot. And I think Tony and I agree that's such a key part of everything. It's not

Carsten Drachmann:

just

Rob Ruyak:

the financials or, you know, having the best business plan and all those kinds of things. But at the end of the day, it really is making sure people can fulfill the roles that they're in. Now, you've been there for, is it, since 2023 with Gomspace?

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah, bit about two and a half years, a bit more than that now. Yeah. So,

Rob Ruyak:

what would you say, what are some of structural changes you had to make in terms of less the people, but more about the strategy? I think I was doing a little research and found some specific callouts around a bit of a pivot more towards commercial. And I think given the current small set market trends, you know, if you could talk to a little bit about how you thought through that and kind of what the strategy looks like today, I'd be pretty interested to hear. Absolutely.

Carsten Drachmann:

So it is, like you say, very much focused on customers at market. When you work with relatively heavy engineering organizations, often you see, if you run very classic, you have some operation here, you have some engineering here, you have some sales over here, and then somebody is trying to be a product manager in between and usually leaving quickly because nobody's listening to them. Then we really changed it into, okay, let's try and understand our business. That became clear quite quickly. We had two very distinct businesses that were not run as distinct businesses.

Carsten Drachmann:

We have the inside of the satellites of products, as we talked about, that's super It's already developed. Customer see, customer like, as I call it, they order supply chain production, deliver and collect cash. No engineers involved. We have an engineering organization that's sort of developing them and saying that. It's a very distinct business model, very transactional.

Carsten Drachmann:

Usually a pipeline is about three months out because your delivery is less than a quarter. So every time you get an order, it's, you know, it's out of the door. The other side are these much larger contracts, which can be with, with agencies, with commercial customers, with governments. That's quite different because it's a one, two, three, even longer year contract, often as it is, but this is we're going to talk about a change also, but often with heavy engineering, because the customers are pioneering something. That's a very, very different thing.

Carsten Drachmann:

It's about risk management, it's about project management, a lot of other things. So very quickly, you simply went in and say, okay, we have to divide this and we have to make it market focused. And these units have to be separated because one of the things I was faced with is what I used to, what I say to people typically, I'm very good at prioritizing but I simply refuse. Because if my day is a constant battle of prioritizing, trying to figure out what the hell do we do next, we have already failed. So therefore, we make and some pre say, you work for products and you work for programs, as we call it, and that's what you do.

Carsten Drachmann:

And sometimes in a past typically you see this, okay, but we need to get this product out, yes, but this project is also important and it's the same people doing it, so it doesn't work. So we made some very distinct setups that helped. And then we had North America, which was basically a no brainer that it's the biggest market in the world for small sets and we had a very, very small market share so this was more, I didn't need to have a solid strategy. I have a fairly, I mean, as you know, Tony worked in The US also, have a fairly good idea of what we need to do. So, hey, let's just get some people on the ground.

Carsten Drachmann:

I'm sure they're gonna generate business and they do. But it's really understanding the business models, yeah.

Tony Sewell:

So it's a great segue. I'm glad you mentioned the North American business and it's a good segue. I mean, of the things, as I've spoken with colleagues working in European businesses over the last sort of twelve months or so, like the market for space and defense is changing a lot and the opportunities for particularly, I think, for European companies are really changing. How do you see Gomspace as a Danish Swedish company, European company, do you see advantages or disadvantages as far as your sort of posture looking at the global market and the opportunity in The US and elsewhere?

Carsten Drachmann:

Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, a couple of things, maybe winding back. While we say we are a Danish company, we are, we are founded here, there's one very distinct thing that I've said, and we love Indonesia and Denmark also, where I'm basically telling the government that I think they're really slow and they're completely underinvested in space. Denmark is one of the few countries in the world that has not bought any space technology.

Carsten Drachmann:

Maybe some grants and funding, you know, whatever. But what that has created is at GarmSpace, we are really good at export, which means we never sold a single thing in our own country, Whereas many of our competitors, especially around Europe, Germany, France, Italy, they are feeding off the government because there's so much European money being put in, Space Agency is all about yield returns, so whatever money is going in here, it's coming back to the industry. So when Denmark put in a $100, we get a $100 back, and then they put in 3,000,000,000 in France, they get 3,000,000,000 back to the space industry. So many of our competitors, not all, but many of them are basically only alive and existing because of a very heavy local focus on, well, we give you money so you can do something for us. That's leading me into why can we compete in The US market?

Carsten Drachmann:

US market is just another market, if you like, that has some distinct characteristics that you need to understand. I understand some of it, I'm not an expert. And then we've hired some good people that knows how to work with the IDIQs and frame contracts and all those kind of things, understand where the budgets are coming, the government, the good old government, where find do out where the money is going, all of that. So of course we can follow that and there's no reason why we can't sell in there. Maybe we don't want to hold a direct government contract, but we don't have to because I think The US system is very allows for this competition where Europe is much, much less competitive.

Carsten Drachmann:

It's much, much more focused into individual countries, which makes it hard whereas I think The US is great because it's actually very open to innovation and other companies outside of US as well. As long as we have a prime in between, we are fine.

Rob Ruyak:

You think that's Is that changing at all, Carson, with all the, you know, the, you know, bigger, you know, GDP percentage commitments for defense investments, you know, in Europe? Do you think it's changing a little bit or

Carsten Drachmann:

It will will change. Sure, it's changing. In Denmark, we've gone up from, I think, 2% to 4.5% of GDP for us, for space, but for defense investment. And this is a little bit the challenge we see a lot in Denmark, but across Europe, embracing space as part of defense, really seeing it, it would be an integrated part of the future. To know the war of the future is not fought with the weapons of the past, right?

Carsten Drachmann:

And this is somehow we keep missing that point. Now there's a war in Ukraine, hopefully it stops very soon. Drones are all of a sudden a big deal. Well, nobody thought about that a couple of years ago, right? So why are we not prepared for that?

Carsten Drachmann:

Could we see drones from space? Yeah, we can probably see them if you put some money into figuring it out, But nobody has been interested so far, so then we are behind already. So I think it's changing in Europe. Another playing field that I really like is Southeast Asia, Africa, but in particular, Southeast Asia, because whereas in The US and Europe, there are a lot of players in the space industry, but in Southeast Asia, they don't have this domestic space industry. And they don't have that ecosystem, which is a completely open playing field for us.

Carsten Drachmann:

And we have this huge advantage, we actually know how to export and sell outside, whereas many of our competitors from some other larger European countries, they don't really know how to do it. So we have a huge advantage out there, and I also think there's no reason why we couldn't get a decent piece of supply in The US.

Rob Ruyak:

And you did want a contract, right? And I saw a news article around this. I think it was with the Indonesian ministry around surveillance for maritime. What what is that a good example? Like to dig it a little bit into what you guys are doing there and.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let me just because realistically, let me just make it very clear. It is not closed yet, but it is definitely very public and out there, and we're still working on it. To be what I say, I will tell you if I can't answer your question. No, so this is a great, really great example of solution selling versus technology selling, whereas often in Europe, we meet maybe startups or a lot of commercial customers that have all kind of requirements who want to discuss every single detail of the satellite.

Carsten Drachmann:

Okay, fine. And this is where engineers are getting into fights and you don't like your customers anymore and all this kind of thing. When we come out, especially this is about governments, they don't necessarily have the skills to buy. And honestly, in Indonesia, they couldn't care less. All they wanted to figure out is how do we stop the illegal fishing?

Carsten Drachmann:

Was a requirement. And what difference does it make? What size the satellite is, power all kinds? That's our job, we'll figure that out. How do we get the data down and get them to have a very nice sort of monitoring center with a lot of screens, and they can see all kind of stuff.

Carsten Drachmann:

They just needed a data stream with more information. So that's a card. So tell me what you need, and we'll take care of the rest. And we'll see more of that, and actually, it's much more efficient, it's much faster, and it's much cheaper that way, as opposed to in Europe where things are really slow because people are very worried about, are we making the right decision or maybe not, or then there's a political play of the geo return who gets what. In Denmark, there's been some scandalous, oh, some politician made a decision, our minister about buying something and then maybe it's the wrong thing and then it's a big scandal.

Carsten Drachmann:

They say, come on guys, this is not how we win. If you're afraid, it doesn't work. You have to be a little bit more bold. And that's where we see, I think in Asia in particular, that there's much more courage to move on.

Tony Sewell:

So that's super interesting. Just quickly going back to The US. So, I mean, you've recently made some important hires to develop The US business And we're obviously at an interesting time from an American policy perspective about preference for made in America and whatnot. At least they talk about that, but whether that's actually happening in reality is another thing. But what does it take for a for a company like Gomspace who is competing with some pretty some pretty big names in the in the small small sat small sat space.

Tony Sewell:

Like what are some of the advantages that you guys bring?

Carsten Drachmann:

Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think the agility of a small and medium sized company is simply bigger. So it's faster and it's cheaper. The other thing that we see very much is that when we are in the small satellite segment, there are no big, big players. Okay, there are a few.

Carsten Drachmann:

Terron Orbital has a certain size, but they had almost went belly up, so Salarket had to go in and take them. So if you look around, there's not a lot of big companies that have these smaller satellites because it's too difficult for them. Airbus, you know Airbus, they don't have, they buy them because they don't have to, they only, if it has to be anything below a €100,000,000, they don't know how to do, right? So you might think there's a lot of competitors, but not really when we come to the space of a small set. Of course, they are competitors, but they're not necessarily big.

Carsten Drachmann:

So I think it's a fairly level playing field from that perspective. Then it's about trust and approach. I believe we have developed here at CommSpace really a focus on customer. Customers like to work with us because we actually listen to them and we are trying to accommodate them. Sometimes maybe too much, but nevertheless, they like us.

Carsten Drachmann:

Give you an example, we have won now two contracts out in Singapore for MicroSATs, so they started the bigger version, so it was sort of 150 kilo ish rather than a smaller CubeSat. We won ahead of the whole world. Everybody was out there wanting to win that. We've never launched a MicroSat before. Never launched a MicroSat before.

Carsten Drachmann:

That's amazing. Without at least five other players who had, in space, proven we can do it. Why did they pick us? Because they like working with us because they could see, we understand what we're doing, they can trust us, and the whole process leading up to the decision has been very positive for them. So it makes a big difference and we can replicate that also in The US.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. It's shocking that that helps to actually be people wanna work with you.

Carsten Drachmann:

Focus on your customer. Right? You know, you guys know that. Yeah.

Tony Sewell:

Totally. And it actually reminds me of years ago, when I was working with Hughes and at that stage they competing with Viasat for the big NBN program in Australia and NBN really wanted Layer two, and Viasat and Hughes both had layer three products and Hughes was like, No, you really want layer three? And Viasat said, Well, we'll do layer two if that's what you want. Guess who won the project?

Carsten Drachmann:

Exactly. No, but there's an element of that, right? So, I think it's very much customer focused. But back to why do we think we can compete in The US? I think, first of all, the market keeps growing, right?

Carsten Drachmann:

So, you get a small piece of supply that fees will grow bigger every year. Then it's about finding the prime. So, some fairly big contracts and also these contracts of reference where we can, you know, hook into. It's no different from what data pass, right? A lot of the, most of the stuff we sold there, we sold to somebody else who was actually holding the contracts.

Carsten Drachmann:

So it's okay. And I think with the agility we have, and we are very flexible if we need to have local production, we said our local production is not a big deal. People often ask me, Oh, what about the terrorist, you're stating strategy and changing strategies? No, I think people are thinking it, it doesn't matter. I just need to position my brand and start getting some traction.

Carsten Drachmann:

We'll figure out the other parts, it's okay. I understand if you already have a, you know, a $50,000,000,000 business and you were hit by 10%, okay, that hurts. But in the scale of your operating, it doesn't really matter.

Rob Ruyak:

So, Carson, where do you see the business evolving? You mentioned and sometimes I think these are the best customers, the ones that are not too technical because they're asking for, you know, I just this is my problem. Or maybe some of them have a hypothesis on what the solution might be. But they But they don't really know the technical background, and sometimes that's actually better, right? And I think sometimes those lead to businesses that sell the solution, the answer, the insight, or a service of sorts.

Rob Ruyak:

Where do you see that potentially playing into your strategy over time, or where do you just see the business evolving? So

Carsten Drachmann:

I see three plus one legs that we will be standing on going into the future. So this is a sneak peek into the strategy that I've half started communicating. So first of all, I see our product business, sort of core products, that will continue to grow because you're selling to competitors, to universities, to anybody who's launching in space, and now with this IKEA kit. So, know, buy a satellite that's pretested. One of the things I think that are going wrong in the industry there is that everybody's trying to invent a satellite, a satellite bus over and over again.

Carsten Drachmann:

Stop doing that, focus on a business case and focus on the payload, just buy, it's here. You've done it for twenty years, you know it works, just buy, you can put it together yourself and do all kinds of cool stuff, that's okay, and paint it red if you want to, but stop inventing over and over again. There's no business case in it. So that's a very specific segment for us. The other segment, let's jump to the solutions that you mentioned, absolutely, is more end to end solutions focused on what is it, what is the problem you're trying to solve or what is the need you have.

Carsten Drachmann:

And it's not, right now we very much see the world as sort of first observation or signal intelligence or SAR. People have these niches. Often the solutions are a combination of the above, which means it becomes a solution. So it's not never one, necessarily one player sitting on all, you know, Planet has a certain business case, Bayer has a certain business case, but in the end it's a combination of everything. So therefore the solution space is there.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yes, we see governments buying more. I see moving from an as a service to asset ownership, especially in government. Go two, three years back, everybody is thinking, Oh, the telco world with as a service, the satellite world is gonna be the same. Know, that's the best thing to know. Everything is as a service.

Carsten Drachmann:

Thanks to Trump and a few wars here and there. Absolutely not. Who trusts? Who will trust? And I say that, I don't know.

Carsten Drachmann:

People say, don't say that, can't say it anyway. Who trusts Elon Musk? Who trusts Elon Musk to actually keep that damn network alive? He was just in a White House fooling around. Do you really know what he's gonna do?

Carsten Drachmann:

No, you don't. And he has absolute power. It's not gonna work, and nations around the world, they understand it. The same comes with, even with, you know, with imaging and there's observation also, secret intelligence. When a shit hits the fan and you're in a crisis, if you have as a service, do you know that you get the priority you need?

Carsten Drachmann:

What about if your neighbor country has a, also has a, you know, a crisis, maybe a crisis with you? So where does that light gonna look? You don't know that, you can't control it. So I see that very much. There is a trend towards asset ownership, which is our sweet spot, obviously.

Carsten Drachmann:

And then we have a middle part, call it platforms, where we look much more at capacity, standardizing platforms that we can deliver in high volumes. And I see that coming also in more and more constellations, not necessarily a SATCOM is usually requires a bit more, but there will also be other types of signal intelligence where you see high volume of satellites or forest fires observing, you know, environmental disasters. You see that coming and I'm going back to their stop inventing the satellite bus over and over again, it is not necessary. So there's also a sweet spot for us sort of in between the solutions where we put everything together. Here, buy a battery pack and a power supply and here's a plastic bag with a key kit to yourself or the in between where we have a very stable supply chain that can do high volume production at high quality to take that risk away from the customer and So use it high these are the sort of the three legs.

Carsten Drachmann:

There's a fourth leg, which is all the money that's flowing through Europe right now. EU money, Germany just announcing a couple of weeks ago, €35,000,000,000 to space alone. And I spoke with many of the players in the German industry last week in Bremen, and everybody knows they can't deliver that much. The German space industry cannot deliver 35,000,000,000 worth of space assets in the next five years, they cannot, which means it's gonna ripple out into other countries, that's us. So then we are playing a little bit differently, assume you're playing to understand where the budget's coming from.

Carsten Drachmann:

It's a bit more political play because you need to know who's allocating the budget, who's deciding what to buy, how is it flowing. It's a little bit of a different play, we are playing that game as well. So that was three plus one. Did I answer your question? I forgot the question.

Carsten Drachmann:

That was really good.

Tony Sewell:

No, was really interesting.

Rob Ruyak:

No, I was just thinking about everything you said because, you know, one of the things that Tony and I like to talk about on this show is, part of it's educational, part of it is helping people that are kind of new to the industry better understand some of the fundamentals. But the most, I think, interesting part for me is where we are in this kind of revisited industry of space is how things are changing and how kind of more of a commercial influx is going to lead to more and more, I think, new business models. And then you have, I think you were talking about, I think, Starlink, SpaceX, Elon. You know, I think the industry will eventually get to a point where there's consumer protection based on that natural free market competition that will just continue to mature over the years. Right?

Rob Ruyak:

We have New Glenn now, which had a very successful landing. And so, I think Tony and I were talking about how exciting that is because it's a great engineering feat, but it's also because now we're going to have more competition, which means more companies such as yourselves that are really innovating at the edge of the customer are going to come up with very new ways of selling services and adding value. It's going to be great for investment and jobs and everything else. So, I think that part of it is super interesting. And I think what you were laying out is not necessarily what you can just kind of read online, but being on the front line and leading this company, which clearly you're making some huge inroads in, You're seeing it firsthand on where the opportunities are, which I think is very, very cool.

Rob Ruyak:

And I can't wait to see how things progress.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah, me too. Well, I hope that's the plan.

Rob Ruyak:

Yeah. Well, you're impressive, so I have no doubt that under your leadership you have a lot of great opportunity to grow and be successful, Carsten.

Carsten Drachmann:

I hope so.

Tony Sewell:

So, I mean, just to tie a bow around that, I mean, what does the next three years, three to five years look like for GOMSpace, do you reckon, Carsten?

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah. We usually answer that question. I get it often and then I have to modify it a bit because we are listed so I can't share more than what I've already shared. But having said that, you know, when I started two and a half years ago, bankruptcy was an option, it wasn't necessarily a failure. Absolute success was being alive today.

Carsten Drachmann:

So we are alive today, so we have absolute success. 10% year on year growth over the next three years, absolute failure, absolute failure. Being alive is an even bigger failure, but significant growth is success. So I think that answers your question. We are now changing from, yeah, we could go bankrupt, a very tight management of cash, really not looking so much as, oh, we have to have great innovation or large development projects or look what's over here.

Carsten Drachmann:

No, no, we just manage it back to when we can handle our cash, we get a motivation back from the employees, which we have big time. We get the investor trust back, I get the board trust back because there was no trust with the board, as you can imagine. I don't know if you saw that, but 2022 was an absolute disaster. Investors didn't trust us anymore to rebuilding that trust, that after two and a half years, our share prices and market cap has gone up 10 times. It was even up 15 times a few months ago, but there was a huge hype in defense shares.

Carsten Drachmann:

So now we have a platform where we have shown that we can execute and deliver positive results. We have our cash flow under control, we have cash flow fee positive, which was a target in itself. We definitely were not when I started. And we have money in the bank, we have a good investor that has invested even more money, so we have money in the bank. Our balance sheet is good with an equity ratio.

Carsten Drachmann:

We have access to more capital. We have all the ingredients, the ingredients that are needed to create that growth. And then the last and most important thing, there's a market that's growing, right? You need to find your footing into that market. How do you capture, and obviously we have I described it the three plus one approach that we have right now.

Carsten Drachmann:

So money is flowing, no doubt we need to capture it. One of the things, so that I'm pitching in Europe, I've been speaking in Brussels a couple of times on resilience from space in Europe. We really, in Europe, we really need to move away from grants and funds and all these kinds of things into, give me a damn commercial contract. I don't want your money for innovating and trying setting up another test satellite. Give me a contract for the next five years and I'll give you what you need and then I'll get, if I need money, I'll get the money because it's not a problem.

Carsten Drachmann:

There's plenty of money out there and if you have a five year government contract, people are gonna stand in line trying to want to invest on. So this is a bit part of the discussion. We're trying to change the narrative and say, no more grants, just start buying commercial contracts from governments and that will also boost us so that some of the answers as well, what's in the next three years, definitely growth.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, Carsten, I mean, it's a credit to you and the team, what you've been able to achieve in a really short time. So super exciting time to be a member of the GOMSpace team, think.

Carsten Drachmann:

And it is team, right? As I say, we are starting from the people and it's about figuring out how we want to do together, then you can do a lot.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, usually like to sort of end the episode just with a-

Carsten Drachmann:

We already have the end. Come on, we just

Tony Sewell:

started. A bit of

Carsten Drachmann:

a fun We can

Tony Sewell:

keep going. With a bit of a fun question, guess. One of the things that I think makes the space industry really unique and what I've really enjoyed about my time in space is the fact that it's truly a global business. It's still quite small compared to some others, but takes you to amazing places. So it's kind of a two part question.

Tony Sewell:

So what's your favorite place that your career in space has taken you? And if you could have your twenties again, where would you have lived?

Carsten Drachmann:

That is a good question. Now, have been privileged. I have lived in many places already and my wife is Canadian, as you know well, Toni. So going by, why don't I start by listing? Actually lived in Brazil in Rio De Janeiro, it's fantastic.

Carsten Drachmann:

I've lived in Singapore, I lived many years in Sweden, lived in London, partly lived in Vancouver where my wife is from. So I've already seen a lot. So maybe I'll answer from my wife's perspective, you know, if we could have an apartment in Paris, one in London, maybe travel to Rome occasionally, and then, you know, Hawaii is great. So, you know what? I don't we like Denmark, we're probably gonna stay here.

Carsten Drachmann:

I have no regrets on any of it but I like to keep traveling and seeing no places. Australia, once, I've been a couple of times, Tony, but I'm looking forward to you. Well, you

Tony Sewell:

gotta get down there.

Carsten Drachmann:

Gotta get right spot. Yeah, it's a great spot. I do. Love all kinds of places and it's also, you know, we started a bit, maybe tied it into culture. I have lived in many cultures, I've managed and led many cultures over the years, and in the end, I realized it boils down to one single thing, it's all about people, right?

Carsten Drachmann:

And maybe we have a little bit of a different upbringing and a different cultural background, but it's all about people and that's where I start from. And then you have to find a common language between a lot of nationalities.

Tony Sewell:

Yep. Oh, we we've just Rob always back. You good, Rob? Alright. Yep.

Tony Sewell:

Now we something happened there. I didn't know you'd lived in Rio,

Carsten Drachmann:

though. I did. Many years ago. Lived in Rio De Janeiro, fantastic time. Right?

Carsten Drachmann:

It's called Apo do, right between Ipanema and Coppacabana. So yep. And

Tony Sewell:

Very good.

Carsten Drachmann:

Robbie, you're back with us. If the girl if girl for me if anemia exists, I can confirm she does. She's and she is beautiful, and she's not wearing a lot of clothes. So yes.

Tony Sewell:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's awesome. Robbie, you back?

Tony Sewell:

No. Having some technical difficulties. Okay. I'll offer I've been thinking about this question of where I wish where I if I could have my time again, where would live in my twenties. We had a family trip to New York a couple of years ago and we were walking.

Tony Sewell:

We walked down to Brooklyn and as I was walking around Brooklyn, was like, man, I wish I'd found this place in my twenties. And I think the other place and I would never get my wife would never move there, but there's something about London that is really special. I love being in London and I get to spend some time with you there, obviously, Carsten. It's a cool city.

Carsten Drachmann:

It is a fantastic city. I think if you ask me of the places I have lived, where would I go back? London, absolutely. Yeah. You turn a new corner and there's something else happening there.

Carsten Drachmann:

There's always something going on in London. It's fantastic.

Tony Sewell:

About you, Rob?

Rob Ruyak:

So, I think recently, a couple of years ago, I went to Tokyo and that was just I mean, mean, I had wanted to go there my most of my life, and it exceeded all expectations. I think that the people and the food in that city is as crazy cool. Hopping on the, you know, hopping on the subway and just being able to go everywhere and everything is so different. I loved it. And it's so clean and people are really nice and they respect it really.

Rob Ruyak:

You could tell they respect one another and they respect the elderly and they take care of each other. I thought that was an unbelievable place. If I were to do it again in my twenties, though, I mean, I had a great twenties. I lived in San Francisco and loved every minute, literally every minute of it. But if I were to do it again, I would probably just like you, Carsten, I'd probably consider Paris.

Rob Ruyak:

I love Paris. I love to learn a new language, which I never really did. You know? So, that city is incredible, though. Love it.

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah. Absolutely. We go back every year. We meet also Tony. Now you weren't there last time, but, yeah, for the for the Paris satellite satellite show there is great.

Carsten Drachmann:

So yeah.

Tony Sewell:

Awesome. Well, look, Carson, thanks again for for joining us. I mean, from my personal perspective, was really a delight for you to join. You've been a great friend and mentor to me over the years, so it was good for some of our listeners to hear a little bit more about you and the success of GomSpace. So if people want to learn a little bit more about you and GomSpace, where can they find you?

Carsten Drachmann:

Yeah, go into gomspace.com, then you'll find our web website and then you can Google my name, Kastor Dagman, you'll find a lot of, they have quarterly presentations, there's a lot of podcasts and other things. So if you wanna learn more there, then we're listed on NASDAQ in Stockholm. GumX is our little ticker, so go look us up there.

Tony Sewell:

Good stuff. All right. Well, I'll make sure we add those to the show notes anyway. So with that, thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed the episode, make sure that you leave a rating and write a review.

Tony Sewell:

And other than that, thanks for joining us, Carsten, and happy Thanksgiving, Rob.

Rob Ruyak:

Happy Thanksgiving. Great to meet you, Carsten. Thank you.

Carsten Drachmann:

Bye bye. Okay. Bye bye.